The Chinese Lesson

The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Oil exports from the Middle East have collapsed by 61 percent. Japan sources 95 percent of its oil imports from the region and faces a supply crisis. China is prepared. Europe watches. This is no accident. It is the result of two fundamentally different ways of thinking.

I. What China Did

In 2021, Xi Jinping visited one of China's large oil fields. He said — roughly, since China does not publish such statements in full — that the country must take its energy supply into its own hands. That was not a reaction to a crisis. It was the anticipation of a possible development.

What followed was not a speech, not a communiqué, not a summit. What followed was action on multiple levels simultaneously. China built up its strategic oil reserves — estimates suggest around 1.4 billion barrels, the exact figure Beijing does not disclose. It expanded its renewable energies so massively that wind, solar and hydropower already generated 31 percent of Chinese electricity in 2024. It became the world's largest market for electric and hybrid vehicles. It diversified its supply chains and energy partnerships. And it built trade relations with Iran that function even under sanctions and under war conditions.

None of these steps is spectacular individually. None produces a good headline. Together they constitute a strategy — a preparation for scenarios that in 2021 were possible but not certain. Today, in 2026, they have materialised. China is prepared. Not immune — but more resilient than almost anyone else.

II. What Europe Did

Europe talked during those same years. It passed energy partnership resolutions and did not implement them. It formulated diversification targets and missed them. After the Russian invasion in 2022 it set a "historic signal" — the special fund, the Zeitenwende, the resolutions — and four years later the structural dependence on unstable energy sources has not ended, merely shifted.

This is not due to a lack of knowledge. Europe has known for decades that fossil energy from politically unstable regions is a risk. It knows that the Strait of Hormuz is a bottleneck through which a substantial share of world trade flows. It knows that the Middle East has been and remains a conflict zone. This knowledge has generated no consequences — because generating consequences would have required bilateral thinking: either act or do not act. Thought multilaterally it means: which of the possible developments occur with what probability? What does preparation cost? What does unpreparedness cost? How does one distribute the risk?

Europe thought bilaterally: as long as there is no war, we need no war preparation. As long as the oil flows, we need no alternatives. As long as the situation is stable, we can defer destabilisation to later. Later is now.

Strategic thinking is not the ability to manage crises. It is the ability to anticipate crises — and to act so that they either do not occur or their impact remains limited. China has done this. Europe has practised the permanent moratorium: endless talking and deciding as a substitute for consequential action.

III. The Structure of Chinese Thinking

What China does is neither magic nor a cultural secret. It is the application of multilateral thinking to strategic planning.

Multilateral thinking means: not "will a war break out in the Middle East or not?" but "what scenarios are conceivable, with what probability, with what consequences for our energy supply, and what do we do to remain capable of action in each of these scenarios?" That is not a question with a binary answer. It is a question with a solution space — and strategic planning means working through this solution space systematically.

China acted simultaneously on multiple dimensions: building reserves for the short-term shock. Expanding renewables for medium-term independence. Diversifying geopolitical relationships for long-term security. None of these measures suffices alone. Together they generate resilience — the ability to absorb disruptions without losing the capacity to act.

This costs something. Holding reserves is expensive. Expanding renewables requires investments that only pay off in the medium term. Diversifying geopolitical relationships means working with partners who do not share Western values. China has accepted these costs — not from altruism, but because multilateral thinking includes the costs of unpreparedness in the calculation.

IV. Rare Earths, Oil and the Pattern

The energy crisis of 2026 is not the first time this pattern becomes visible. It is only the most current and most painful instance.

With rare earths, Europe already received the same lesson — and did not learn it. China controls over 80 percent of global processing capacity for rare earths that are indispensable for electric mobility, wind power and defence technology. Europe has known this for years. It has passed diversification targets. The dependence persists.

With semiconductors, the COVID pandemic showed how fragile global supply chains are when a single bottleneck — Taiwan, a port, a factory — brings production worldwide to a standstill. Europe drew lessons from this — on paper. The European Chips Act has been passed. Implementation stalls.

The pattern is always the same. The analysis is correct. The resolutions are ambitious. Implementation fails — through national interests, through short-term cost considerations, through lack of political will to make decisions that cost today and only benefit tomorrow. Thought bilaterally: the costs are real today, the benefit is hypothetical. Thought multilaterally: the costs of unpreparedness are also real — they simply materialise later.

V. The Uncomfortable Question

Here lies the actual discomfort of the Chinese example — not the political, but the structural.

China can think long-term because it does not have to be re-elected every four years. The costs of measures that only bear fruit in ten years are not charged to the next election campaign. The population is not consulted on decisions that are expensive in the short term and necessary in the long term. The authoritarian system has a structural advantage over democracy in this respect — not because authoritarianism is better, but because democratic systems have a structural incentive toward short-termism.

That is no apology for the Chinese system. It is a diagnosis of the problem Europe must solve if it wants to become strategically capable of action. Democracies could also think and act long-term — but they need institutional structures to enable this: independent strategic planning agencies, multi-year investment programmes with parliamentary commitment, mechanisms that decouple short electoral cycles from long-term strategic decisions.

These structures exist in Europe only in rudimentary form. They are not strong enough. And they will not become stronger as long as the permanent moratorium remains the basic political posture: talk, decide, defer.

VI. What Europe Could Learn

The lesson from the Chinese example is not: Europe should become authoritarian. The lesson is: Europe must learn to hold multiple dimensions simultaneously — and draw consequences from this before the crisis has arrived.

Concretely for energy this means: build strategic reserves, not only when the price explodes. Expand renewables so that they actually generate supply security, not merely meet climate targets. Diversify supply chains for critical raw materials — with investment in Africa, Latin America, Australia — before dependence becomes vulnerability to blackmail. And organise European coordination so that 27 national energy policies do not solve the same problem 27 times, but jointly develop a solution.

That is multilateral thinking in practice. Not the question: should we act? But: on which levels must we act simultaneously to remain capable of action across the various possible futures?

China has not given Europe an ideological lesson. It has given a practical one: those who do not anticipate the future are overtaken by it. Those who only react to crises pay the maximum price. Those who are prepared for possible developments retain control — or at least do not lose it entirely. That is no wisdom of the East. That is craft. And Europe has stopped practising it.